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British author JK Rowling poses with a copy of her book "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" at Edinburgh Castle in Scotland, July 15, 2005. Each new book sells enough in its first day to keep the author "in style," writes guest blogger Jock Coats. If there were no intellectual property laws, would Rowling still have written the Harry Potter series?

Intellectual property rights – better thought of as intellectual monopoly rights – are an unnecessary evil. They are unnecessary because all their stated, utilitarian aims can be achieved by other means. They are an evil because granting artificial rights to non-property restricts everyone else’s property rights. They are more likely to be used to stifle the creativity, innovation, and emulation that underpins technological and cultural advance; and they concentrate wealth and power in the hands of privileged non-creators more interested in milking selected others’ efforts.

Dignifying them with the phrase “intellectual property” is a contemporary conceit to conceal crude market interference through state granted privilege with the flimsiest gossamer of respectability. The primary origins of patents lie in maintaining the state’s coffers, and of copyright in state censorship of ideas.

Property rights arise from a desire to prevent conflict over scare resources. Ideas, patterns, recipes and processes are non-scarce. Intellectual monopoly laws impose different time periods and restrictions. From time to time legislators arbitrarily decide to protect previously unprotected categories of invention. Even legislators then don’t regard them as genuine property, ownable in perpetuity by the first owner and their heirs until they chose to dispose of it.

However, many claim that, without intellectual monopoly, those with innovative and creative minds would not use those faculties, insufficiently rewarded for their creativity. This is by no means self-evident. If...